Monday, May 5th, 2008

I finally ventured out of my office 5 minutes ago to get lunch. Yes, I know it’s already 3pm but this is the usual time my stomach will digest my 9am breakfast fully. The weather has been so blazing hot recently that I have been refusing to step out of the air-conditioned room. Unfortunately, my empty stomach has been making so much noise that it’s embarrassing. I figured that it would only take me 5 minutes to take the elevator down to the ground floor, pop into Delifrance to get some pastry and come up to the office again, so I didn’t bother to change into my heels. Instead I wore the flat pumps which I park in my cubicle.

Murphy must be trying very hard to prove that his theory’s true because who had to step into the same elevator while I was going down but the cute MO whom I’ve not seen for months. He’s this fair-skin decent-looking guy with boyish good looks and spectacles. He always has nice clean shirts and matching pants on (and yes, nice shoes) and he’ll roll his sleeves to his elbows. Most doctors look horrid with distasteful dress sense, equally horrendous hair and looking totally shagged out from their killing workload. He’s one of the few who actually look good all the time, even in his scrubs. Oh, I love him in his scrubs actually! Makes you wonder what he’s wearing underneath heehee. My guess is that like most other doctors, he wears scrubs for his on-call night and when you see him the next morning, he looks slightly scruffy with stubble on his face. Very sexy haha.

There was a period of time when I would bump into him every other morning as I stepped out of my office to grab some tea at the cafeteria and he just happened to walk by. Seeing him again made me realise that I’d not spotted him for the past few months. He probably transferred to another department. Anyway I couldn’t believe my eyes when he stepped into the elevator and there I was, a good 3 inches shorter. Okay, you may say that’s my normal height anyway but that’s the point of wearing heels, for goodness sake!

For a short while, he was standing in front of me which was good because I didn’t really want him to see me. And I’d a scenic view of his butt which was small and perky. I’m not lascivious! His butt was just right there for me to see! Also noticed silently that his legs seemed quite thin which made me feel conscious of my own thunderous ones. Made a mental note that he was wearing his funky white shirt with thin green stripes and biege pants again. I seldom see guys who wear light-colored bottoms (not white, please) and look smart, so I thought that’s cool. Sleeves rolled up to elbows – checked. But at the next floor, many nurses swarmed in out of nowhere and he moved to stand beside me. Damn! I tried to be very still for the next 20 seconds so that he wouldn’t notice how short I was. It seemed like a bloody long time and I thought I would die before the elevator doors opened at the ground floor and we all moved out.

Wow I managed to match my entire outfit from head to toe literally! *sprinkles flower petals and twirls round and round on the spot*

That’s my obsessive compulsive disorder for you. I’m such a nutcase.

Anyway talking about acts of rebellion, lately, my little sis has once again taken to pleading with my mum for permission to get more ear piercings. Ok, she’s turning 20 this year, so she’s not exactly the little girl in pigtails sucking a lollipop anymore. Oh wait, she’s still doing the latter part. Anyway, it all started with, surprise surprise, yours truly, ME.

Now, 我的母亲大人 is this super cool type of mothers who makes other children with other mothers envy their children like crazy, who has no use for curfews for her children (I didn’t know there was such a thing as curfews until my friends told me of theirs) and practically allows and trusts us to do anything except for drugs, random sex, tattoos and body piercings (other than the traditional pair on the ear lobes). I can call her 王大妈 (her maiden surename), 猪妈妈 (no, she’s not even fat) or 这位大婶, and she won’t get mad at all, but she can’t tolerate unnecessary ear piercing. She’s someone whom you can reason with and fight for something but it’s extremely hard to reason with her how the piercings are essential when even you know they’re not.

I argued with her incessantly throughout my adolescence about getting ear piercings. I wanted to do badly without any specific reason that I could state except I want, I want, I want, but she didn’t allow, even though once, my dad actually had the nerve to stuff me some money to get the piercings right in front of my mum. My mum came very close to slaughtering him on the spot. One mistake which my mum made then was using the same excuse of “以后你长大了，我才不管你” to push me off for the moment. When she said that, I knew she meant the age of 21 but I didn’t care. When I was 19, a freshman and for once, freed from the conventions of school, I went to get them done after informing her the night before. Perhaps thinking that I wasn’t serious because I said it frequently, she only said “不可以” before running away to avoid more confrontation. Imagine her anger when she saw my piercings the next day. It was worse when one of the two new piercings was on the helix, totally not traditional.

I think she scolded me “神经病” and refused to talk to me for the entire day.

But of course it was all back to normal the following day. That’s my mum for you. How can she ever stay angry at her beloved daughter whom she loves too much haha.

That was definitely a form of encouragement for my sis. I’m actually surprised that she hasn’t done it yet. Afterall she has already earned irk from my mum when she dyed her hair red after graduating from junior college last year. Oh yes, my mum doesn’t like us dyeing our hair either, but mine’s black because I chose to be. When she told me about her piercing plans, I told her, fine, go ahead. I’ve no rights to disapprove anyway. Not sure why she’s bothering to seek approval which she’ll never get haha.

I’m trying to push my mum’s boundaries by getting a tattoo this year as a 25-year-old gift to myself. I really think that she’ll be bloody mad and probably scream at me for a full minute, which she very seldom does and is therefore a truly frightening thought indeed. But well, I only live once. I can’t always live as according to my mum. She’ll understand.

*sigh* Having a bad pimple breakout that never seems to calm down these days. Might be the insanely blazing hot weather.

Just as I was depressed and down from my current skin condition, yesterday as I was at AMK Hub, I spotted this little girl.

You might say that she was no ordinary girl. For she has severe facial deformities, not sure whether accidental or congenital. Her nose, which should be a tiny button nose for little girls of her age (maybe 4-5 years), was swollen, huge and kind of joined to the right side of her face, which also seemed to droop. Her left side was alright though. I honestly don’t know what I would do to myself should I be in her state. But of course she was very young, and perhaps still ignorant that she didn’t look quite the same as other children.

So there she was, all decked in nice pink clothes, looking just like how any other girl would look like. And she was walking outside the Lee Hwa Jewellery store, looking at herself in the mirrored wall of the showcases, smiling.

For a moment, I thought I was about to cry. Here I was, worrying about how I looked, when this little girl, no bigger than a golf bag, was living bravely with facial deformities that instantly marked her different from all other people and probably for the rest of her life.

Why should I let things bother me so much when in reality, the same problems might mean nothing in significance to others?

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.
— Charles Dickens